"This is the text of the standard talk that Dylan Neal, Joe's former owner, gives to pro-abolition groups. I originally wrote it for myself, as a way to get down the backstory between Dylan and Joe, but it also shows a little about the world, and about one of the possible ways that a slave can be trained."

The main reason why this is only sort of a story in the Keptverse is that everyone else writing in the Keptverse seems to be writing RPS, which makes me neurotic, even though I accept that given that these RPS are taking place in an alternate universe, it's not as if even the RP themselves could possibly take this seriously. (The other reason is that my motto is Does Not Play Well With Others, so I'll feel free to modify any aspect of the Keptverse as I go along, tra la la...)

This story may be regarded as fanfic written in the Keptverse, if you like. There is the beginnings of a cast list here.

Part One

The doctor who replaced Richard Kimble on the late shift was a free man: he kept Kimble for fifteen precious minutes making certain that he had all the details of the nine survivors from the one o’clock Games. Kimble knew better than to let himself sound tired: the doctor could easily complain of Kimble’s lack of attention.

He was half naked in the changing room – not yet into the shower – when one of the supervisors slammed in. “Get dressed.”

“In what?”

It would be unusual, but not unheard-of, for them to send Kimble back to operate on a second shift. In what? was a reasonable enough question, and the supervisor acknowledged it by only clouting Kimble once, and fairly gently. “In whatever you wear when you’re not working. Get out of all your surgical clothes.”

What Kimble wore when he wasn’t working was a shabby and worn pair of sweats, and a cracked pair of slippers. He had no confidence that they would be replaced if he was ever careless enough to do something more strenuous than sleep in them, and he had no very effective means of washing them. But the supervisor had already hit him once. Reluctantly, Kimble stripped and pulled on the sweats.

The supervisor cuffed his wrists together, and took his arm, escorting him briskly along the corridor to a door he was not normally permitted to step through. It seemed that he was this afternoon, though once the other side, the supervisor stopped to put on leg-irons.

Through another door. The back of his hand was stamped with purple ink. Past a brightly-lit counter and a foyer where a couple of other people were standing watching him, and he was outside, breathing fresh air that smelt of rain.

“In here.”

It was a car: an ordinary four-door saloon. The supervisor pushed him into the back seat, and strapped him in. The door slammed. Briefly, he was alone.

Then someone else got into the front seat. One of the people he had seen in the foyer. He didn’t say anything. The car started, smoothly, and drove off. Kimble slumped back against the seat, holding his cuffed hands cautiously in front of him, and wondered, briefly, if it would be safe to relax and go to sleep. It would depend how long the drive in front of him was, before he was expected to work again. Worth asking?

No.

It was possible to stay awake by repeatedly pinching the flesh on his wrists with the metal cuffs. Kimble concentrated on that. The car swept along wet roads, through the city: Kimble leaned against the window, staring out, fascinated. The last time he’d been driven this way it had been in a bus with tinted windows. He kept tweaking the skin on his wrists: it would have been too easy to fall asleep looking.

Their destination looked like a private house, away from the lake. But it had high walls, and good security. The car parked at the front of the house, and the driver got out and came round to let Kimble out. He was a dark man about Kimble’s height: once out of the car, he took Kimble by the arm and briskly, not painfully, escorted him into the house.

It looked like a private house inside, too. It was warm. Kimble stood in the hall, blinking, as the driver took his handcuffs off and unlocked the leg-irons. There was a woman – a very young woman – sitting on a big wooden bench. She stood up as they came in. “Sam, I found the files you were asking for.” She was staring at Kimble.

“Great.” The driver tucked the cuffs into his pocket. “Okay, where’s Benton?” He picked up the leg-irons from where they had fallen, and put them on the bench.

“He’s in the kitchen, Sam.”

“Well, go get him.”

She went at a run. She came back with a tall, dark-haired man only half a minute later. He looked at Kimble with the same odd stare.

“Benton, you busy?”

“Yes, Sam.”

“Great, great.” The driver sounded preoccupied. “Willow, give me those files. You and Benton make sure this guy is cleaned up, get him some fresh clothing, get him fed. Don’t let him give you any shit. I’ll want to talk to him once I’m done for the day.”

There was a door to the right of the entrance with a keypad lock: grabbing the files from the young woman, the driver keyed it open and went inside, leaving Kimble with the other two.

“What do we do now?” the young woman asked. She was watching Kimble, but clearly speaking to Benton.

“We are to get him cleaned up, find him some fresh clothing, and let him eat.”

“Yes...?”

“Clearly, it would be more efficient for one of us to find him fresh clothing and one of us to escort him to the bathroom.”

“Yes...?”

Kimble was beginning to find this almost funny, in a weary sort of way. He did not risk smiling. One of them had to be having the other one on: but it was impossible to tell which. There was a pause as the two of them seemed to look at each other out of the corner of their eyes. Then the man cleared his throat.

“Ah, perhaps I’d better take him to the bathroom.”

“Okay. Clothes. I can do clothes.”

Benton did not take hold of Kimble’s arm. He gestured at the stair, and Kimble obediently went up ahead of him. He stopped at the top of the stairs, and Benton said “Second door on the right.”

The bathroom seemed luxurious. What it really was, Kimble thought, soaping himself under the hot water in the large shower, was not institutional. The purple ink would not come off his hand: he hadn’t expected it to. He rinsed himself off, relieved to be clean at last, and stepped out of the shower. Benton handed him a towel. “Are you hungry?”

Kimble nodded.

“Once we find you something that you can wear, you can have something to eat.”

The door opened, and the young woman was standing with a bundle of clothes in her arms. “Fraser, there isn’t anything in exactly his size – he’s taller than everyone except Sam.”

“Ah.”

“So I went into Sam’s room and got some of his stuff.”

“Ah,” Benton said again.

“But in case he gets, you know, embarrassed, do you think you could tell him it was you?”

“I don’t see any reason why we need to discuss exactly which of us performed what part of his instructions,” Benton – Fraser? – said, thoughtfully.

“That’s what I figured,” the young woman said. She held out the bundle of clothing to him: after a moment, Kimble came forward to collect it. Sweats, underwear, a t-shirt, and a pair of rubber-soled sandals.

The young woman smiled at him, a little, and disappeared again. When Kimble was dressed, Benton pointed at the door: the young woman was waiting outside. “The kitchen is downstairs,” Benton said.

The kitchen was a big room with a table large enough for eight: there were files spread over half the surface, and a dark-haired man sitting reading through one of them, a cup of coffee beside him.

“What do you like to eat?” the young woman – Will? – Willow? – asked. She sounded as if she wanted to know, and Kimble realised after a moment she was asking him. He shrugged. He couldn’t think of an answer that sounded right. He was quite anxious to hear what Benton would say.

But all Benton said was “Sam wanted him to have something to eat. Ray, are there any ready meals in the freezer?”

“Ready meal?” Ray stood up.

“Or something out of a can. I’m sure Sam didn’t mean us to go to any trouble. Besides, we still have thirteen files to read through on the Trenton case.” Benton paused a beat. “Of course, we can always take some of them home.”

Kimble shook his head. He guessed the order to sit down had been meant for him, and picked a chair at the clear half of the table. The chairs were wooden, uncushioned, but comfortable. He spread the palms of his hands out on the smooth wooden surface of the table, smelling the coffee in Ray’s cup, feeling dazed enough to put his head down and go to sleep right here. Willow sat down in a chair across the table from him and nearer the door.

Ray and Willow talked, back and forth: Benton was silent, reading. Kimble listened, trying to take details in and failing. From the clock on the wall, it was not even three hours since he had gone off shift at the arena. He ought to be in the narrow bunk in his cell. He would be on shift again in five hours. If he was going back.

The mug of coffee in front of him startled Kimble into looking up. Ray had a narrow face, with a sharp look. “Milk? Sugar?”

Kimble shook his head. He hadn’t drunk coffee in three years. He picked the mug up, feeling the warmth slide through his hands. Even the first cautious mouthful was almost too much. He swallowed. The room seemed to pass into unreality. This could not be him, sitting in a warm room on a comfortable chair with the taste of coffee in his mouth. This could not be real. When a bowl of pasta with vegetables and cheese and bits of bacon was put in front of him, and a fork handed to him, Kimble ate slowly, the tastes filling his mouth. His stomach felt full before the bowl was empty: the others were still eating. It would be practically impossible to pocket the leftover food, and Kimble didn’t try: but when Benton stood up to collect the bowls, taking Kimble’s away with a mound of pasta still in it, even though Kimble didn’t think he could have eaten another bite, he still watched it go with regret.

“There is more,” Benton said, pausing between table and sink, bowls in his hands.

“What?” Ray had pulled a short stack of files over in front of him, and was leafing through the top one.

“More pasta,” Benton said.

“You want more?” Ray looked up.

“No, Ray, I thought Sam’s…” Benton’s voice trailed off. He had a handsome, impenetrable face, but he looked at Kimble with inquiry written all over it. “Can you tell us what you’re doing here?”

Kimble shrugged. He put his hands together in his lap, and glanced at the clock. Four hours till his next shift. “No,” he said. “I don’t think so.”

“What’s his name?” Ray asked.

“Sam didn’t say,” Willow said. She had finished her pasta and stood up. “Shall I make coffee?”

“What did Sam say?”

“We were to make sure he was cleaned up, in fresh clothing, and got something to eat.”

“And ‘Don’t let him give you any shit.’” Benton added.

“He said he’d want to talk to him at the end of the day,” Willow concluded.

Ray nodded.”Sam said he’d be done in the workrooms around seven.”

That was information. Kimble kept himself awake after that with repeated hard pinches to the soft flesh between thumb and forefinger, and one more cup of coffee, when it was offered. He had to stay awake till seven: if he were taken directly back to the arena and expected to work the night shift, that didn’t bear thinking about so he wouldn’t think about it right now.

Two other people came into the kitchen, separately, and helped themselves to pasta or to coffee: Adam and Dana, a slender dark-haired man and a slender red-haired woman. Will told them what Sam had told her, and added on her own account “He doesn’t talk much.” Benton interrupted his reading to walk Kimble to a staff lavatory, not long after six.

But most of the time, the kitchen was quiet, but for the rustle of turning paper. Benton and Ray read: Willow watched Kimble, and said nothing.

I'm still way impressed by that episode in your story - I mean, not that I'm not enjoying the rest, I am. But that particular bit - that was subtle - how things work, how Dylan could be brought up with slaves and become an abolitionist and believe that it's still right to own slaves.

I read the meta piece you posted on What We Keep, too - it's about the only left I really regret about being banned from livejournal, that there is no meta fan community on IJ to post/join discussions like these.

Because I think the right position to take, living in a country like that, would either be to avoid owning slaves - sure, you can't avoid being connected with slavery, but you can do your bit about not being in it - or to leave the country*. Not that I don't understand Jeff and Cate and Dylan, and appreciate that they're doing what they can within the system, but they are still part of the system, supporting it even while they try to change it.

*And I bet that it's difficult to leave the US as it now is, unless you're very wealthy...

By the way, you can help me on this - what is the name of the US in this universe? Is it still just "the United States" or something else?

I don't know any of the fandoms, but I'm still intrigued!

I suppose I should do a "meet the folks" post - I'm just not sure how...

But that particular bit - that was subtle - how things work, how Dylan could be brought up with slaves and become an abolitionist and believe that it's still right to own slaves.

He doesn't actually believe that owning slaves is right--it's more that given that it's going to take years, even decades for anything to change, providing at least a few slaves with a safe environment is the least of the available evils.

I read the meta piece you posted on What We Keep, too - it's about the only left I really regret about being banned from livejournal, that there is no meta fan community on IJ to post/join discussions like these.

You're banned from LJ??

Hmm. I thought there was some kind of meta comm over here. Perhaps it could be resurrected.

Because I think the right position to take, living in a country like that, would either be to avoid owning slaves - sure, you can't avoid being connected with slavery, but you can do your bit about not being in it - or to leave the country*

Leaving the country is tough. Most of the industrialized countries either wouldn't take Americans, or have similar systems. The USNA government would also make it very difficult for someone to leave, by seizing their assets and possibly arresting them for treason.

As far as not owning slaves, the only way to do that without ending up in jail eventually is to keep your income below the threshold. The problem with that is that it means you have little ability to influence public opinion or the law.

By the way, you can help me on this - what is the name of the US in this universe? Is it still just "the United States" or something else?

Officially, it's the United States of North America, which includes the current 50 states plus most of southern Canada and northern Mexico. Unofficially, it's the Empire.

I suppose I should do a "meet the folks" post - I'm just not sure how...

Have been since June 2006. It was over an argument about breastfeeding, in which I was in the right and Six Apart/LJ Abuse was in the wrong, but, well, my cause was right, my heart was high, and yeah: I got banned.

Hmm. I thought there was some kind of meta comm over here. Perhaps it could be resurrected.

There's a meta comm, I think, but I don't go much for meta just as meta: there are specific meta discussions I'd like to join in with sometimes, but they usually all happen on livejournal. So it goes.

Leaving the country is tough. Most of the industrialized countries either wouldn't take Americans, or have similar systems. The USNA government would also make it very difficult for someone to leave, by seizing their assets and possibly arresting them for treason.

No more foreign holidays... George W. Bush's kinda country.

As far as not owning slaves, the only way to do that without ending up in jail eventually is to keep your income below the threshold. The problem with that is that it means you have little ability to influence public opinion or the law.

Well, it's a decision, isn't it? If enough people decided not to be complicit in the system, just to refuse to own slaves, the system would break down. And the only way that happens is by people actually doing that - not striving to earn enough money to become slave owners themselves, but working together to keep their friends and neighbours from slavery and making careful use of their income and property so that they don't ever officially reach the threshold at which they have to buy a slave.

For the people who were born with enough wealth that it would be a question of giving it away/paying fines, like Dylan, and who inherited slaves that they are not allowed to free, it would be too difficult a choice to join the people who do not and will not own slaves. I think you did an excellent job of conveying that. But Dylan won't ever influence public opinion much so long as he's living a comfortable slaveowner's lifestyle: you would have to get inside his head (as you did) to show how he is almost as much trapped into that lifestyle as his slaves - almost, because he does have the option of quitting - like a cigarette addict has the "option" of giving up cigarettes. I'm sure free people enjoy listening to Dylan: he lets them feel they can continue their aspirations towards the comfortable middle class so long as they treat their slaves decently.

If enough people decided not to be complicit in the system, just to refuse to own slaves, the system would break down. And the only way that happens is by people actually doing that - not striving to earn enough money to become slave owners themselves, but working together to keep their friends and neighbours from slavery and making careful use of their income and property so that they don't ever officially reach the threshold at which they have to buy a slave.

Keep in mind that the threshold is very low. We're talking about essentially living below the poverty line so that you don't have to pay taxes. For people with children, it means that your kids will be stuck in the public school system, which is even worse than it is now, and they'll mostly be stuck in low-paying, dead-end jobs that are barely keeping them out of slavery.

The other problem is that most slaves are not owned by individuals, but by corporations. Even in the unlikely event all of the wealthy people who could owned slaves chose not to, those slaves would end up doing farm work, or toxic waste cleanup, or medical research, or any of the other dangerous shit jobs that free people won't do. Once you're a slave, you can't get out of the system. For Dylan, that means that Andy and Sherri and Craig and Seth and Kyle would just be sold to someone else. Andy and Sherri are in their late 50's/early 60's; Kyle's got a reputation for being mouthy. Any of them would have good odds of ending up in a situation where they'd essentially be worked to death.

But Dylan won't ever influence public opinion much so long as he's living a comfortable slaveowner's lifestyle: you would have to get inside his head (as you did) to show how he is almost as much trapped into that lifestyle as his slaves - almost, because he does have the option of quitting - like a cigarette addict has the "option" of giving up cigarettes. I'm sure free people enjoy listening to Dylan: he lets them feel they can continue their aspirations towards the comfortable middle class so long as they treat their slaves decently.

There's no such thing in this world as the "comfortable middle class"; there's just the very wealthy, the slightly less wealthy, the clinging desperately to their middle-class status, and the one disaster away from slavery working class. The abolitionist movement is almost exclusively upper-class, because they're the ones who have the luxury to worry about the morality of the system, rather than having to constantly scramble to avoid getting caught up in its gears.

As for influence, compare Kate to Dylan. Kate's got her blog, and she goes to meetings and does activist work, and that's important. But the only slave she's ever really talked to is Paul, and she's had no measurable impact on his life.

Dylan, on the other hand, has all of his parents' slaves that he's kept on, plus the ones like Kyle that he's bought mainly to get them out of worse situations. They're not free, but they are in a place where they have at least some dignity, where they know they won't be beaten or starved or sold at whim--and where they don't have to wear the mask, because Dylan will never punish anyone for speaking their mind.

In addition, because of his work, he's had a direct impact on the lives of a couple hundred slaves, and indirectly, many more. He was able to get one of the biggest illegal slave breeding operations on the West Coast shut down. Yes, the slaves involved--and their children--are still slaves, but Commerce is actually going to exert some effort to see that they're placed well. More importantly, no one's going to try that game again any time soon, knowing that the slaveowner responsible is now a slave himself. Down the road, Dylan will probably run for office. If he can get elected, he'll be in a position to bring legislation to the floor that while it may not end the system, will be the first chips in the law.

I'm not saying that he's a perfect altruist by any stretch of the imagination, or that he doesn't have selfish reasons for owning slaves. It's that the nature of the world means that refusing to own slaves ends up being a symbolic gesture which, while noble, doesn't do anything toward changing the facts on the ground for any individual slave.

Keep in mind that the threshold is very low. We're talking about essentially living below the poverty line so that you don't have to pay taxes.

Can't be. I mean, literally, economically, it can't be set at that threshold. You posit a society where people can be compelled by law to buy a slave before they can afford to buy a place to live - and that simply wouldn't be workable, especially as it seems to be a given that the number of slaves you can be required to own actually depends on what sort of space you live in. No, it makes more sense if the threshold is set at the kind of level that I've seen a couple of other writers assume - that you can be compelled to buy a slave or two when you reach, well, John McCain's idea of poverty-level living - only one house, only one successful business.

For people with children, it means that your kids will be stuck in the public school system, which is even worse than it is now, and they'll mostly be stuck in low-paying, dead-end jobs that are barely keeping them out of slavery.

Actually, I think the real problem maintaining your income perpetually at a level which means you can't legally be required to buy a slave would be the financial insecurity - you can be living quite comfortably at that level until something goes wrong, at which point you are suddenly at risk of slavery yourself. So I think what people who were trying to combat slavery by not owning slaves would do would be to form networks of committment - the Internet would be great for this, but you could do it in a local kind of way (and I bet people did) before the Internet - in which people commit to keep each other out of slavery.

The other problem is that most slaves are not owned by individuals, but by corporations. Even in the unlikely event all of the wealthy people who could owned slaves chose not to, those slaves would end up doing farm work, or toxic waste cleanup, or medical research, or any of the other dangerous shit jobs that free people won't do. Once you're a slave, you can't get out of the system.

Sure. For most people, keeping your income at that level in order not to own slaves would be like me not eating eggs or chocolate unless they're free range eggs or fair trade chocolate: the vast majority of what's produced is still produced cruelly/unjustly, and sold to corporations who don't give a damn. But you do what you can with the resources available to you. The fact that no slave can hope to be freed and most slaves die young, worked to death, suggests a doomed society on the brink of slave revolt - a person who has literally no hope but death for themselves and for their children is a person who can afford to do anything. But given that these stories are being written in, as it were, the pre-Revolution period, about slaves who currently have some hope of living and about owners who are somewhat more personally involved than corporations, that fictional universe includes the free people who rebel against the system by refusing to own slaves. If there are none, because the threshold really has been set so impossibly low that a person may be compelled by law to buy a slave even though they live so close to the poverty threshold that the act of buying a slave may temporarily push them into poverty and - if something goes wrong - they end up a slave themselves - then the culture is doomed for revolution within a handful of years: probably none of the slaveowners we are writing about will survive, and indeed nor will most of the slaves.

For Dylan, that means that Andy and Sherri and Craig and Seth and Kyle would just be sold to someone else. Andy and Sherri are in their late 50's/early 60's; Kyle's got a reputation for being mouthy. Any of them would have good odds of ending up in a situation where they'd essentially be worked to death.

Oh sure. Anyone in this society who inherited slaves and wealth is in a no-win position - they can't free their slaves, and there is no other moral way to get rid of them, and they have got to keep their income level at a point where they can support the slaves they inherited.

What would genuinely give this culture a chance of survival - at the moment, it looks completely doomed - is if there were enough wealthy slaveowners arguing that they want the legal right to free their slaves - putting the position that when their slaves have put in a lifetime of service, they want to be able to free them and give them a pension. Once you establish that there is a legal way out of slavery short of dying, that right can get expanded on. Not that I want this culture to have a chance of survival - it is interesting as is.

As for influence, compare Kate to Dylan. Kate's got her blog, and she goes to meetings and does activist work, and that's important. But the only slave she's ever really talked to is Paul, and she's had no measurable impact on his life.

Well, look at it this way: Kate's life has an impact on every free person she meets to whom it has never occured before that there was any alternative from desperately striving to make enough money to get out of the at-risk-of-slavery income group. If Kate is part of the network of people supporting each other from sale for slavery, she gives these people an alternative, more workable hope. (Yeah, I know these networks are something I just made up. But it would surprise me if the low-income abolitionists hadn't thought up some such scheme.) Maybe some of the people Kate's met and talked to joined a support network and were saved from being sold as slaves. Maybe they talked to others. Maybe Kate has changed more people's lives than Jeff has. (Dylan, as a lawyer, we know has the opportunity to change a lot of lives - the slaves of Kyle's former owner, for example.)

I'm not saying that he's a perfect altruist by any stretch of the imagination, or that he doesn't have selfish reasons for owning slaves. It's that the nature of the world means that refusing to own slaves ends up being a symbolic gesture which, while noble, doesn't do anything toward changing the facts on the ground for any individual slave.

Well, it's possible. After all, I just thought of these support networks. But I bet there's more and smarter people out there who refuse to own slaves and who work towards abolition than the twitty guy Joe meets at the supermarket door.